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Discount cloud: Market lets agencies tap unused capacity

By Rutrell Yasin

Oct 10, 2012

Agencies shopping for on-demand compute services will soon be able to buy unused capacity, at a discount, via a cloud marketplace.

NJVC will offer the service on its new Cloudcuity Government Marketplace via the Cloudcuity Management Portal. NJVC will use Virtustream’s xChange technology, which allows government agencies, health-care providers, educational institutions and financial services companies to create a virtual cloud marketplace of approved vendors and consumers of cloud services.

NJVC will host the xChange technology on the recently unveiled Cloudcuity platform, a multi-cloud broker service for the federal government that lets agencies try, design and price an array of services from cloud providers before spending money and committing to large-scale migration. NJVC, a provider of technology services to the government, is now expanding Cloudcuity’s capabilities through an alliance with Virtustream.

“Virtustream xChange will give NJVC Cloudcuity users the automated ability to compare the cost of service offerings across the Cloudcuity Management Portal,” said Kevin Jackson, vice president and general manager of NJVC Cloudcuity. Federal agencies will be able to take advantage of temporary price reductions through spot pricing and arbitrage, Jackson said. In addition, NJVC will have the ability to dynamically adjust rates and apply a variety of pricing methodologies, such as fixed, variable, tiered and subscription, delivering on an important tenant of agile acquisition.

Each industry has unique requirements and standards for the cloud. For example, healthcare institutions have to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, civilian federal agencies have to adhere to the Federal Information Security Management Act, and Defense Department agencies have to comply with The DOD Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process.

As a result, it had been difficult to interconnect clouds within organizations to share capacity, applications or information. The xChangetechnology now provides this secure and compliant capability, Virtustream officials said.

The government-focused xChange will also provide supplier scoring, billing, price comparisons and workload migration, while offering a dashboard on performance and service-level agreement requirements. By employing a marketplace concept, xChange lets users respond to dynamic pricing based on availability and demand, officials said.